He sniffed the wind as he sliced away another strip of bark. The air was thin here, and cold. The mountain peaks rose so high that they seemed almost to scrape the underbelly of the stars. A paved road, bordered by solid causeways, led down through the crags, and into the valleys below. It reminded him of home, but only a bit. Chogoris was a flat world, for the most part, and the mountains distant.
But Almace was a world of curves and slopes. The system had extensive asteroid fields, and most of the worlds in it had suffered from meteor impacts within the last millennia. Now, forests spread across the impact sites, flourishing due to the lakes that filled the craters. Between these craters, and the mountains thrown up by their creation, the world was tumultuous and rocky. The mountains were the only place where ships of any size could safely make an orbital descent. And so, he and his students had come.
A dozen Space Marine Scouts, clad in the white of the Chapter, moved swiftly about the landing zone, hard at their trade. To a man, their hair was unbound, or cropped short, as was the tradition. Only a proven warrior could wear a topknot. They carried a variety of weapons, for Rukn believed a warrior should be prepared for any eventuality.
Several sunk sensor triggers into the hard earth, and planted krak and frag mines at carefully calculated intervals. Others strung monofilament wire through the buildings overlooking the landing zone, or erected deadfalls and drop-pits. Rukn oversaw their efforts, doling out the occasional grunt of satisfaction or dismissal.
This was the third potential landing zone they had prepared for the enemy. Of the initial fifteen the Imperial Fists had identified, five had been targeted for destruction. The remaining ten had been split between the warriors of the White Scars, the Raven Guard and the Imperial Fists. Each Chapter would prepare the areas in their own way. Those closest to Almacia were being fortified and garrisoned. The ones further out were being rigged with traps and automated defensive emplacements.
Rukn was not privy to the overall strategy at work, but he thought he’d guessed it well enough. The Imperial Fists had a good head for such things. The areas Calder had identified corresponded closely with Rukn’s own assessment of the planet.
There were few places anything of any size – such as troop carriers – could land safely. Not without pounding the area flat, first. And even then, moving equipment and men across such terrain would take time. Too, the enemy had shown a willingness – a preference, even – to capitalise on existing landing zones. That made sense. Making use of an enemy’s infrastructure was an old trick, and one Space Marines often used to great effect. It allowed for swift deployment, despite the obvious dangers.
If you were canny you could turn a planet’s substructure into a weapon. Paths could be diverted or booby-trapped, landing zones used to coordinate flak batteries, and vox-grids given over to false encryptions. That was what they were doing here, and all across the world. Giving their foes a trickster’s path to walk – many options, all of them bad.
But such preparations required time, something Rukn sensed that they did not have much of. They would do what they could in what was available, but it wouldn’t be enough. The enemy would land troops, and then it would be a fight.
The vox-bead in his ear clicked. Rukn looked over at one of his charges, crouched near the treeline. The Scout gestured. ‘There’s a depression here. Perfect place to set up one of those automated guns the Imperial Fists gave us.’ The guns were stripped-down assault cannons with a dual drum feed, mounted on anchored plinths. Their machine-spirits were primitive, even by the standards of remote weapons – they would fire until their drums ran dry, and then power down. They weren’t built for punishment the way a Thunderfire cannon was, but they performed their duty well enough.
The White Scar studied the landing zone with a hunter’s eye, marking the places where multiple gunships might touch down. There was always a pattern to it. The winds were high here and they would be under fire from automated flak batteries. He paused, calculating. He gestured with his branch. ‘No. There, to your left. Grid point tertius-quintus. Set it up there.’
The Scout didn’t argue. ‘Pressure plate or motion sensor?’
‘Motion sensor with timed sequence,’ Rukn said. ‘We don’t want it firing until they’ve started to disembark.’
The Scout nodded and set about the task with commendable diligence. Rukn watched them work, wondering, as he often did these days, whether they were the last such warriors he would ever train. The galaxy was changing around him in ways he couldn’t fathom.
He thought of the Imperial Fist – Calder. The way he and his Intercessors towered over others, the way they moved with a grace that even Space Marines could not match. Their kind were on Chogoris now, learning the ways of the brotherhoods. The thought unsettled him. Many of these Primaris were not from Chogoris. They were Terran, from the days before the Great Khan had lost himself to legend. They did not even speak Khorchin. Yet, they had been welcomed into the Chapter’s ranks. They were needed. Every blade had value, whatever its shape or origin. Or so he’d been taught.
He remembered his first glimpse of those new brothers. So like those he knew, and yet not. At first, he’d thought them machines or mutants. How else to explain such dissimilar similarity? They even smelled different.
Was this how humans felt, when they met his kind? If so, he could understand their hesitation. It was as if the future were a hungry wolf, pacing just beyond the fire’s light. Eventually, it would come for Rukn and those he called brother. Only time would tell whether they would survive. Whether they would continue, or whether they would fade from the galaxy, as the ancient Thunder Warriors had, in the days of Terra’s unification. As he considered this, the snarl of the vox pulled him from his reverie.
‘Rukn. Are you there, old wolf?’
The voice was that of Torag, the Uquillian, the master of the Fifth Company’s air support. Rukn sighed. ‘I’m here, Uquillian.’
‘At least someone is. I half feared Suboden would leave me here with nothing but ravens and labourers for company.’
‘Is that any way to speak of our allies?’
‘Do I speak false?’
Rukn laughed. ‘No. Birds and builders they are. I wonder what they say of us.’
‘They are likely too much in awe to say much,’ Torag said. The Uquillian was arrogant, in the way of all birds of prey. Too much time hunting the skies had given him an inflated notion of his own prowess. Rukn remembered when Torag had been one of his, before the Uquillian had earned the right to wear a warrior’s topknot. Torag had been taciturn, then, and inattentive. He sighed.
‘Yes. I am sure that is so. What do you want, Uquillian?’
‘I’ve completed the destruction of the last of the landing zones in the north-western grid. I wanted to see whether you required assistance…’
Rukn frowned. ‘You’re no better at lying now than you were as a Scout, Uquillian.’
The vox crackled for a moment. Rukn could imagine the Uquillian’s face as he tried to decide whether or not to argue the point. In the end, Torag grunted sourly.
‘What are we doing here, old wolf?’
Rukn knew the question was rhetorical. He decided to annoy Torag by answering it as if it weren’t. ‘Once, I rode with the Master of the Hunt himself, Uquillian. As did you. Then, we chose to join Suboden’s Ming-han when he went to Armageddon. And we stayed with him when he left. And now, we are here.’
‘A bad decision, in retrospect.’
Rukn snorted. ‘You sound upset.’
‘I am upset, brother.’
‘Would you like to discuss it?’
‘Don’t patronise me, old wolf.’
Rukn snorted. ‘You’re angry, then.’
‘Aren’t you?’ Static crackled for a moment. ‘We should be with the khan. Not here.’
‘It is up to the khan to choose where we should be.�
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‘He made the wrong choice.’
‘Be sure to tell him that, the next time you see him.’
‘You know what I mean, brother. Why are we here? The Raven Guard could complete these preparations as easily as we can. Why waste our skills here, when we could be out there, hunting the foe?’
‘Why waste time hunting the foe, when the foe is coming here?’
‘Why let them come here at all, when we could paint the stars with their blood?’
‘Careful, brother. Someone might accuse you of being poetic.’
Torag laughed. A harsh sound, like the croak of some great bird of prey. ‘Surely you feel the same way, Rukn.’
‘Even if I did, I have my orders, as do you. We stand with the Imperial Fists and the Raven Guard, under Lieutenant Calder’s command.’
‘He’s no Imperial Fist.’
Rukn ceased his whittling and sighed. ‘He wears their colours. He espouses their way of war. He venerates their primarch. What would you call him?’
‘Unnatural.’
‘Your biases are showing, Uquillian,’ Rukn said. Torag, like many, shared his concerns and was more willing to voice them, regardless of who might be listening. ‘Just because you’re short…’
Torag growled, and the vox signal twitched like a thing alive. ‘Do not mock me, old wolf. You know damn well what I mean. He is Primaris. He is not like us.’
‘That is true. He is taller, and his insides are more crowded. But beyond that, we are the same.’ Rukn bent back to his whittling. He considered sharing his own unease, but Torag had irritated him. Torag had always irritated him, even as a Scout.
‘It is not seemly that he be set over us, merely because he is…’
‘What? Who would you have had the khan put in charge? He would not thank you for that, brother. We would still be doing as we are now, and more of us besides. At least this way, some among our brotherhood taste battle.’ Rukn chuckled. ‘Be generous of spirit, brother.’
‘You’re one to talk.’
‘One of us must be sensible.’
Torag growled again, a low rumble of discontent. Insulted perhaps, he deactivated his vox, leaving the conversation unfinished. Rukn waited a few moments, to see if the Uquillian would return, and then turned back to his duties.
The problem with his brothers, by and large, was that they prized foolish things. What was honour, next to victory? What was glory, next to survival? Rukn had never seen the point of such ephemeral desires. To be, to serve, was enough for him. To do what he was good at, and be allowed to do it well, was all he had ever desired. Suboden Khan, at least, understood that, and had allowed him to remain as a teacher for the younger warriors, and those who had yet to earn their scars and scalp locks.
He sighed again and turned his attentions back to his students. He stabbed his sharpened stick into the ground and stood, loosing an annoyed grunt. ‘Not there, fools,’ he roared, as abashed Scouts turned, dismayed expressions on their faces. ‘Consider the angles of fire. Recalculate and reposition those guns. Hurry now.’
Rukn looked up. Somewhere above, the khan was riding into battle. For a moment, Rukn wished he was with Suboden and the others. He laughed to himself and tugged on his beard. The enemy would be here soon enough.
He merely had to be patient.
The precinct-fortress sat on the edge of the mid-city, guarding the boundary between high and low. Mid-Town was a narrow stretch of high-end hab-units and shopfronts – a twilight space between the rich and the poor. Here, the well-to-do could slum without actually going to the slums and the poor could pretend to be rich, if only for a few moments.
Karros had seen many such places in his centuries of war. ‘A lie,’ he murmured, as the grav-tram descended into the stew of narrow streets. The tram was one of Eamon’s personal transports, marked with his sigil. It was meant to carry the emissaries of the cardinal-governor – and their bodyguards – into the lower areas of the city, to conduct the business of state. The grav-units set into its undercarriage hummed loudly, straining against the weight of its current passengers even as the archaic chassis rattled about them.
‘What?’
Karros recalled that the vox-link was open. ‘This place. It is a lie.’
Calder glanced at him. ‘I was not aware a place could be a lie.’ He stood near the doors, arms crossed. His head was bent slightly, to keep from damaging the bottom of the roof. Benches lined the sides of the cab, and the windows were of hardened glass.
Through the windows, Karros could see other grav-trams – smaller and less powerful than the one they were in – travelling slowly between the tiers of the city. There were more primitive forms of transport visible as well. Communal transit platforms carrying hundreds of people rose and fell at designated shaft-points, their machinery spewing oily smoke and sparks. There were also large stone stairways for the thousands of pedestrians to move along quieter routes.
‘A figure of speech.’
‘I’m aware,’ Calder said. Karros heard the smile in his words.
‘Forgive me, brother, I’m not used to one of you having a sense of humour.’
‘An Imperial Fist, or a Primaris?’
‘Both. Either.’ Karros looked down. His auto-senses detected a faint tremor in the engines. The tram was old, and like so much in the Imperium, coming apart at the joins. He wondered if it could be fixed. Then he wondered if it should be fixed.
Karros often found himself wondering about such things. It was a failing, he knew. Doubt was a flaw in the armour of the soul, but nonetheless – he doubted. He wondered, even about the simplest of things. Some among his Chapter thought that made him overcautious. They thought his doubt made him hesitant to commit to a strategy. He often found himself subordinated to others. Always second, never first. Always the shadow, never the caster.
That suited him.
‘Why a lie?’
He looked up. Calder was watching him. The Imperial Fist was unsettlingly observant, at times. ‘Better to say it is an illusion. A mask that people can slip on, to pretend to be something else. And when they ascend or descend, the truth is revealed. Places like this are playgrounds of falsehood. They hide the sins of the wealthy and conceal the degradation of the poor.’
‘You sound as if you have made a study of such a place.’
‘Haven’t you?’ Karros tapped on the window, tracing shapes in the condensation that collected in the corners. ‘You seek to emphasise strength. I look to the flaws. Exacerbate the resentment of the lowest, and you can cripple a city. The Raven Guard wage little wars, to win big ones.’ He rubbed a thumb and finger together, letting his armour’s tactile-senses examine the condensation. ‘I could take this city with five warriors. Maybe ten.’
‘And if I were guarding it?’
He’d expected the question. Anticipated it. But not the tone. There was no anger in it. No implied chastisement. Only curiosity. He paused, but only for a moment. ‘Twenty. Maybe double that, if you’d had time to prepare the defences.’
Calder nodded. ‘I estimated fifteen.’
Karros wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or merely a statement of fact. Before he could reply, the grav-tram’s landing klaxon gave a whoop. The tram shuddered as it settled onto a designated plinth, beneath the watchful gazes of stony saints and angels. The doors juddered open with a hiss, and a metal walkway clattered down.
Calder ducked beneath the frame and stepped out onto the street. Karros followed, scanning their surroundings. If someone was planning to attempt an assassination, now would be an ideal moment. As he stepped down onto the pavement, he blink-activated a dull rune on his helm display. A dizzying array of images flashed into view, crowding at the edges of his vision. His warriors had set up thousands of pict-recorders throughout the city in order to assemble a working tactical map for Calder.
A rune f
lashed, alerting him to a stray vox signal. Someone was talking on an encrypted channel close by. Innocuous enough in a city. But then, perhaps not. Through the feed, he watched as men and women slunk into view. He watched them watch him and Calder walk along the avenue. It was somewhat disconcerting to see himself from above.
‘We’re being watched,’ he said. Around them, people drew back. Karros’ battleplate registered spikes in adrenaline in the closest. Fear. Fight or flight. Those were the reactions the Adeptus Astartes provoked in those unused to their presence. Familiarity allowed a normal human to pretend that a Space Marine was just like them, but for the differences in height and mass. But in the back of their mind was always that first terrible impression – here be monsters.
‘Yes.’ Calder’s head twitched, and Karros knew he was studying the feed as well. ‘Not just by human eyes.’ Karros glanced up and saw the distinctive foetal shape of a cyber-cherub flitting across the gap between two buildings.
He’d amused himself their first night on Almace by capturing several of the cyber-cherubs and back-tracing their pict-streams. Two had led him to members of the Ecumenical Council. The third had belonged to Eamon. Spies were common among the upper classes of the Imperium. Everyone who could afford them had several. The Ecclesiarchy was no different. Mostly, the spies watched each other.
But the arrival of Space Marines was often akin to a stone dropped into still waters. Every action made ripples. He knew Calder could feel it as well – tension was increasing by the day, and the number of spies was growing. These were just the ones they’d noticed.
As if reading his thoughts, Calder said, ‘It was worse, on Terra. Every two-bit bureaucrat has their own spy network. They practically trip over each other in their hurry to report to their masters.’
Apocalypse - Josh Reynolds Page 16